Blow to Berlusconi brings Italy govt to the brink
Political observers had warned a guilty verdict could provoke the capricious former premier into pulling support from Enrico Letta’s grand coalition, for failing to offer him legal protection.
Commentators yesterday said the risks of that were limited for now, but the right would want payback for the harsh seven-year jail sentence and lifetime ban on holding public office inflicted by magistrates Berlusconi has long decried as “leftist” persecutors.
“Nothing will ever be the same again. The government will not fall but it will not be saved from the storm,” political analyst Stefano Folli said in Italy’s main business daily Il Sole 24 Ore.
“It would not serve Berlusconi to bring down the grand coalition,” but “he will try and present himself as a sort of ‘defender’ of the people, unjustly persecuted,” Folli said.
The 76-year-old billionaire cannot afford to pull the plug just yet: Polls show the left currently leads over the right, and any withdrawal from the coalition would open up the path to a damaging alliance between the left and the protest Five Star Movement.
Berlusconi can, however, drum up public support for having been handed a sentence even stiffer than that requested by prosecutors — who had called for him to be given six years in jail.
The media magnate late Monday slammed “an incredible sentence, of a violence never seen or heard before, handed down to try and eliminate me from political life,” and pledged to “resist this persecution (and not) abandon my fight to make Italy a truly free and just country.” The sentence will be suspended until all appeals have been exhausted, a process likely to take years.
According to Folli, the center-right “may plausibly increase pressure on their keystone issues” such as blocking an increase on VAT and a loathed housing tax.
Massimo Franco, political commentator for the Corriere della Sera daily, said the verdict was “a time-bomb” for the uneasy center-left and right coalition, already suffering internal tensions.
“Not dumping his judicial misfortunes on the coalition, at least for now, validates Berlusconi as a responsible politician,” he said. “He has taken on the role of victim, which he excels at.” “But what worry are the repercussions on a coalition which already has to perform daily acrobatics to survive,” he said.
James Walston, politics professor at the American University of Rome, said the conviction “turns up the heat” on Berlusconi, whose sentencing on Monday was just one of several legal woes.
A Milan court last month upheld his conviction for tax fraud connected to his Mediaset empire, confirming the punishment of a year in prison and a five-year ban from public office, frozen pending a second appeal.
A definitive ruling in that case is expected to fall around October this year.
“Berlusconi now has to use every weapon in his armory to get out of this conviction. He will try to change the law, get a pre-emptive amnesty, anything to give him judicial protection,” Walston said.
Ordinary Italians were, as ever, divided over Berlusconi’s legal woes and his future in politics.
“I don’t believe he will pull support for the government... it would not work in his favor. I’m curious to see what he’ll come up with this time, he is certainly a cat with nine lives,” said 46-year-old Raffaele Lanzia, as he drank coffee in a bar in the center of Rome.
Paola, a 35-year-old Italian nurse, said she thought Berlusconi likely had already struck a deal by which he would be made exempt from his legal responsibilities before the Mediaset verdict falls.
“I’m sure there will be an amnesty soon, they wouldn’t have sentenced him otherwise,” she said.
n Agence France Presse
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